Take the sky
by irnan
Summary: What do you mean, River's left with Dean? Simon yells. Organise a search party, Wash quips, the dinos can pick up her trail. Zoe snickers. Has anyone told Sam yet?
1. Chapter 1

_This is a disclaimer._

_**AN: **Nobody move! I've dropped me brain!_

**Take the sky**

They've been gone ten hours, and Simon has been panicking for nine-and-three-quarters.

Kaylee's been holding his hand and trying to get him to calm down, because she likes Dean, and if she likes people, they're usually trustworthy, but Sam has been _no help at all_. When they told him, he just rolled his eyes.

"That's Dean for you. No gorram consideration. But he will look after her."

"She shouldn't be in a position where she needs looking after!" Simon yelled.

Mal, Wash, Zoe and Inara all fled the vicinity not long after that, escaping the Pacing Wrath of Simon. No one's seen Jayne in two days anyway, as is liable to happen when Serenity's dirtside for any length of time, and the Shepard has been closeted with Sam. Wash reckons they're playing _Dungeons and Dragons_, and is kinda offended they didn't invite him. Inara mentions something about bibles and demons, and that's when Mal starts cleaning his guns, slowly and carefully but with great... deliberation.

The room emptied fairly quickly after that.

When the miscreants finally get back, it's dawn. The sky is pale blue streaked with orange, a cool breeze blowing off the nearby lake. It promises to be a beautiful day, warm and sunny, perfect for swimming and talking and drinking ice-cold tea and being a family.

River's practically dancing up the path towards them, leading Dean on and on, laughing. He's sauntering along in her wake, hands in his pockets, utterly relaxed.

He swaggers over to them, early sunlight bringing out the gold in his brown hair, eyes bright with mischief and weariness and pure, unadulterated delight, so infectious it makes Kaylee smile, too, and Sam just freezes up, transfixed by the look on his brother's face, a look Dean hasn't worn since long before their father died. Not for the first time, he thanks whatever God there is out there that they met these people when they did - and not just because they'd be dead now if they hadn't.

"Where the hell were you, you bastard!" Simon yells, shattering the moment.

Dean chuckles, claps him on the shoulder before moving past them all, heading for his and Sam's room, dark rings under his eyes attesting how tired he is. "Dude. You're sister's awesome. You should let her out of her room more often."

River skips up to them then, wearing a smile so like Dean's that Sam has to remind himself that yes, Dean is _his_ brother, not hers.

Simon is hers. Dean is his. Yup.

"Meimei," Simon says, rather helplessly. She pats his cheek in much the same way Dean just clapped his shoulder.

"It's OK, Simon. Dean took care of me. It was fun. We're the same, him and me. Pieces can be anyplace."

"But, River, it's dangerous. You shouldn't..." his voice trails off in face of her frown.

"I was fine, Si-_mon_," she says, and Sam recognises his own 'brat-voice'. _Deeeeean!_

"Really," Simon says, unconvinced.

Then she does something that makes Sam want to run for the hills as fast as possible. He can't take two of them, gorramit.

"Dude," says River Tam, totally serious tone of voice but smirking Dean's smirk again, "totally. I kicked demon _ass_."  
_  
_And she skips off after Dean, whistling to herself. Sam thinks it's _Highway to Hell_.__

Simon, meanwhile, is staring after her helplessly, while Mal, Zoe and Wash snigger in the background and Kaylee strokes his arm comfortingly.


	2. Chapter 2

**Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here**

Even after the thing with River and the demon-ass-kicking (not that anyone believed that last bit, but Sam suspects rather gloomily that the girl was telling the absolute truth), Mal doesn't hesitate to take Dean along on their next job. It's a perfectly simple, run-of-the-mill burglary, and Dean is delighted, because with his cut, he buys a pair of The Boots.

Calf-high black leather, soft and supple, and while it's true he can't bring himself to tuck his jeans in the tops - or worse yet, swap his jeans for trousers like Mal's - he loves them just the same. River thinks they're cool, too, and she sits cross-legged on the floor in front of him while he's polishing them and chats to him, playing with the other boot, the one Dean's not holding.

Sam watches them from the other side of the room, quiet and thoughtful.

_We're the same, him and me. Pieces can be anyplace._

"Sam," Zoe says, joining him. "What are - oh."

"They're cute together," Sam says wryly.

"Simon'll kill your brother if there's anything going on," she says warningly. "And then the Cap'n will mutilate the remains, lit them on fire and toss 'em out the airlock."

"Nothin's going on. Nothin' will. Dean's just -"

Zoe sits down on a crate by him and motions for him to join her. "Actin' like a five-year-old in a candy store from the minute we picked you both up. It's kinda adorable."

"He never had the chance to be that kid. He's catching up. And we haven't had a, a normal, uninteresting life as adults, either. There was this - there was this war, where we're from. Not like that one I read about here, the Unification War. It was... well, I don't know if you'd understand. We fought and died and killed in the shadows, and the people we were protecing were the first ones to label us _murderers_. And the enemy, well, they'll never be defeated. Not really."

Sam's a little puzzled by her long exhale at first, but then he realises it's understanding. She pats his knee. "Boy," she says, "if you'da told us that right from the start, you mighta saved yourself a bit of trouble at the beginning, there. We know a thing or two about wars you can't ever win on this boat."


	3. Chapter 3

**How to Talk to Girls At Parties**

The fourth time Mal Reynolds walks in on Simon and Kaylee snogging in the engine room, he snaps.

Not that he minds them snogging in the engine room, as long as his ship's still runnin' well as ever. It's better than them doin' it anywhere else - in the galley, say, or the bridge, or any other place he needs to be on a regular basis. But three weeks ago the doc couldn't hold a conversation with Kaylee that _didn't_ end in her stompin' off in a huff over his damn rambling, thoughtless mouth, and now the girl's got her tongue in said orifice twenty-four-seven.

The Winchesters are sprawled side-by-side on the couch outside the infirmary, not talking or anything, just being. Mal was astonished and pleased by just how well they fit in with his crew and the way they earn their bread - especially the illegal bits - and even more impressed with the way Dean can get River to dance and sing and laugh in ways the doc's been tryin' to for seven months and never quite managed, but every time he sees them together, he feels... shut out. They might become a part of his crew sometime (already are, actually, but he's not about to go admittin' that just yet), but come across 'em unexpected-like while they're alone together, and it's painfully obvious that no one on Serenity will ever be a part of the Winchesters.

"Cap'n," Sam says, putting a touch of a fake drawl into his voice that makes his brother grin - they get endless entertainment out of the way Mal and Zoe and Jayne talk for some reason. "Beer?"

"Come for a word with your brother, actually," Mal snaps. Dean sits up straighter. "Why? I don't care what Jayne says, I haven't done anything wrong all week."

Mal wonders, in some small corner of the back of his mind, when the gorram Hell he went from Captain of the ship to everybody's ersatz Daddy, but he pushes the thought away for further consideration later on.

"What did you say to Simon?"

Sam makes a noise that's someplace between a whoop and a laugh, and Dean raises his eyebrows innocently.

"You know what I mean, kid. River says the two o' you spent near on three hours locked in the infirmary, jest talkin', and now the boy's downstairs in the engine room with his tongue down my mechanic's throat."

Dean's grin turns evil quick as if Mal's flicked a switch of some kind. "Yeah, well. Figured the kid needed some help. With a few things."

"Really," Mal says, soaking his voice in sarcasm even though he's secretly rather relieved.

"Really," Dean agrees with him. "By the way, while we're on the subject of what River says, she also mentioned I might wanna have a word with you as well?"

Figures that 'Nara would choose that moment to swish by on her way to the galley, and Mal's quite proud of the dignified way he turns around and heads down to the cargo hold without lookin' back, despite Sam's laughter trailin' after him and the burn in his cheeks.

Damn those kids.


	4. Chapter 4

**Spanish Ladies**

With Mal's sullen, surly blessing, Wash teaches Dean to fly.

Sam spends a lot of time arguing with his brother about planes and heights and why it's a very, very bad idea to entrust the safety of an entire ship to someone who can't make the forty minute trip to Washington from JFK without screaming like a girl when there's turbulence and humming Metallica when there isn't, but Dean ignores him. He's thrown himself into this place, this life, with the enthusiasm of a little kid in a toystore, as Zoe once remarked, and that extends to learning to fly.

Besides, it's the only mode of transportation there is these days, he points out. If they ever wanna be independent again, someone has to learn how to do it.

Logically enough, says Sam, as we're five hundred years in the future and living on a spaceship that could rival the _Millenium Falcon_ in sheer rattiness. Princess Leia would have a field day with this one.

Dean says Sam's lucky Kaylee's not around to overhear that, and Sam retorts angrily that neither Kaylee nor anyone else on this gorram ship even know who Princess Leia is.

Of course, that's the moment River chooses to start humming the Imperial March, and Sam storms off, a painful weight of homesickness and an encroaching sense that Dean is drifting further and further away from him with every day growing in his gut.

Dean doesn't deign to notice him for a few days after that, caught between hurt and anger and the same homesickness as Sam, and somehow, the sharp-edged silence between the two of them manages to pervade the _entire boat_.

"They're not even crew," Mal mutters to himself. "We picked 'em up and meant to put 'em down again as fast as possible, and they just... stuck around."

"It's called doing a good deed," Inara snarks.

Mal glares at her. They both know perfectly well that leaving the Winchester brothers to the mercy of the Alliance back on Tianjin had not been an option. By the time the troops had arrived to further complicate the job the brothers had messed up, both Dean and Sam had met River and Simon Tam.

Inara sighs. "I don't understand why you can't accept the idea that you might actually like them," she says. "You know. As people. As friends."

"I don't like people!" Mal yells into the cargo hold. "OK? I don't like people, and I don't have friends!"

Over the other side of the hold, Kaylee drops a box. The silence that follows that echoing crash is so thick, it''s hovering on the verge of becoming sentient and starting to eat people.

Mal looks round at his crew and mutters a string of Chinese swearwords that Inara can't quite hear and isn't sure she wants to.

"That sounded a little different in my head," he says.

Inara drains her teacup with a single, dangerously precise and dainty sip. "That's because there's more empty space in there than out here," she says sweetly, and sweeps up the stairs to her shuttle without waiting for a reply.

River, perched on the stairs behind Mal, sighs. "Siiiiiii-moooon," she sing-songs. "Simon. You fix people. Fix Dean and Sammy."

It's an order, peremptory and unapologetic. Simon grimaces. "I'm a doctor, _meimei_," he says. "Not a time-travelling miracle worker."

He goes anyway, before she starts to sulk.

Sam's on a couch outside the infirmary, book in his hands. He's not reading it. Simon paces around inside for a few minutes, pretends he's putting things away, making an inventory of stuff they need to pick up the next time they're dirtside. In the end, he drops the scalpel he's been staring at and walks out to the doorway, where he leans one shoulder against it and crosses his arms over his chest. It's not a very Simon-like pose, but that helps, because he's about to say something that's not very Simon-like at all.

"You're homesick," he says, and Sam looks up in surprise. "You're homesick, and angry, and alone. There's no way for you to return to your old life, your proper world, and you can't really get your head around the way the new one works. You're so tired you feel like your head is splitting and you can't concentrate on anything because you're putting so much energy into being something you're not, and the one person in the verse who might conceivably understand what you're going through is so far away from you that even though you're on the same boat, you might as well be on different planets. Sound about right?"

Sam puts his book down, very slowly. "Don't tell me you're reading my mind, too," he says.

Simon smiles, a humourless, slightly twisted smile. "I wasn't born out here, you know," he answers. "I didn't go to medical school in some half-assed community college place financed by drug money because even the underworld need doctors sometimes."

"No," Sam agrees neutrally. "Your accent's too smart and your clothes are too expensive."

"We're not here to talk about me," Simon says.

"We're not here to talk about anyone," Sam snaps. "In fact, strictly speaking, we're not here for anything, full stop. We're just stuck, suspended in space and time with no way to go back."

"Maybe you should try moving forwards," Simon suggests. So maybe there's a biting sarcasm to his comments. Maybe. He can hear his own voice underlying Sam's, his own fears and angers about the life he and River are living. All the snide little comments that bubble up inside him when he's stitching up another bullet wound or sprawled exhausted in his bunk after an afternoon spent haggling for the most basic medical supplies, and Simon doesn't like the sound of it. He's spent a lot of time debating this very issue with himself, and after late-night arguments in the silence of his own head and the echo of his father's voice and the itch in his hands to do something with his life and help people contending with the equally powerful need to look after River, he made his decision. Every now and then, he still indulges in just enough selfishness to regret it, a little. But he made his decision.

That sort of thing makes him snappy. Possibly even kinda vicious.

"How very trite," Sam says dryly, and Simon grins at last. "Yeah, it was," he agrees. "But still, you know?"

Sam still doesn't look convinced. "You're telling me to just resign myself to fate and make the most outta life?"

Finally, the penny drops.

"Yes," Simon says.

Sam stares at him like he can't believe he just said that, and maybe a part of Simon can't either, because he's never been the kind of guy who just resigns himself to his circumstances and gives in without a fight. But in this case - what else is there to say? The Winchesters can't get back. They have no way to know what did this to them, and they certainly have no way to find out why. What else is there to do but accept it, the way Dean has?

And with that name, Simon hits on the perfect argument, the one thing Sam will never, ever be able to argue with if his relationship with his brother looks anything like the way Simon thinks it does.

"Dean's managed it," he says. "He likes it here. You wanna take that away from him? I don't know anything about your world and where you came from, but the fact that he finds it so easy to connect to my sister is telling me a hell of a lot."

Sam looks like Simon's slapped him. Well, actually he doesn't, because Simon suspects Sam would break his nose if Simon had slapped him, but he's white and shocked and not a little angry. Then he sighs, sinks into the sofa. He looks far older than his years, suddenly.

Simon watches him for a second longer, and then turns back to the infirmary. Job done. Well done, Tam, have a medal of commendation or whatever they're called. He feels kinda bad for blackmailing Sam into... into _all this_, but it was necessary. Right? After all, you can't have it both ways: you can't have your own life, unemcumbered by your family, and still keep them at the same time. Right?

Behind him, Sam raps his knuckles on the door. "So where did you go to school?" he asks.

It's a peace offering, and an apology. Simon's quite proud of his increasing profiency in Winchester-speak, which is a dialect of Serenity-speak, but with different accents.

"You know about the Core worlds?" he asks, and Sam sits down on the guerney. "

"Not so much."

"Well, lets start there."

The next time they're dirtside, Dean finds them back on the otherwise empty ship; Sam's teaching Simon how to throw a punch.

"Can't I just make do with dodging?" Simon says, irritably.

"You don't think it's kinda dumb to do one but not the other?" Sam retorts. "C'mon, stand up. Again."

"You sound like the Captain," Simon mutters.

"I sound like my Dad, which is even more worrying," Sammy says, and grins.

Dean picks up River's forgotten jacket off the crate near the doors, and leaves again without them noticing him.


End file.
